fee for felling, bucking in place

[SwampDonkey]

About the only tree service around these parts is the N. B. Power Corporation. If they see danger trees along the lines, even on your lawn, an orange ribbon gets tied on the tree and the crew comes along and bucks it up. The owner cleans up the mess. Or, if you protest against cutting the tree down, you may or may not win. It's the Power Corp's call. We don't pay for this out in the country, but I heard that they charge in the cities. If a feller wants a tree on a lawn and the owner wants to give it away, that's all he gets. Owners out in the country are just close to their woodlots, and tight with their money. And 99 % of the time the tree on the lawn that has to come down is pretty rotten and most of the time the owner will keep the wood for the furnace. ;D

When it comes to the woods:
I know that most landowners up here in our rural setting won't pay you to cut their trees, they want a stumpage fee and you take the wood and leave the brush. Nobody here that logs will ever clean up brush in the woods, other than to push it off a field edge that may be used for a landing. Anyone logging and looking to get them rates, $100/tree, are gonna find themselves out of work. You can't even get $100/cord at the mill right now. In this kneck of the woods it takes alot more than 1 tree to make a cord. Our hardwood trees just aren't the size and quality you folks have further south. We get way more sawlog volumes from our softwoods.

[Ron Wenrich]

We have one outfit that pays $70/Mbf for cutting and skidding to the landing.  The biggest problem is that they have a different way of scaling so that they can get a big mill overrun, which means that logging cost is lower.

If you are going to do this type of work, make sure you have liability insurance. 

[Woodhog]

Here a power saw operator (fell, limb and cut to length) also stump pile 8 foot small wood works for  about 45.00 Mbfm...for saw logs...

He has to buy his own safety gear, saw and gas and oil...

With the recent increases in gas and oil its is hard to get anyone to work..

If he has to drive about 20 miles to the job site I guess they figure it is just as profitable to stay home
and collect employment insurance or welfare...

[floyd]

well, let's see - fuel costs up 90%.  Pay is the same. guy doesn't pay on time...what you gonna do? work because you like it?

[timberjack240]

if the world didnt revovle around money and if everything was free id work because i like it  ;D but it does revovle around it so, so much for that idea :

[Frank_Pender]

Out here, most all of the ground cutters are getting $200 to $250  for a 6 hour day.  They are falling, limbing and bucking Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, Grand Fir and such.

[SwampDonkey]

And your talking about trees with 10,000 bf or more each. ;) I cruised some sitka spruce stands in BC with about 3000 m^3/ha (335 cords/acre) and here in New Brunswick I haven't seen a 300 m^3/ha stand of spruce-fir. Theoretically they are suppose to exist here, but hard to find. ;D (200-250 m^3/ha is more realistic).

I see some newly graduated whipper snappers sometimes use a figure like 38 m^2/ha basal area in spruce and fir thinnings (30-50 year old stands) and call it 38 cords/acre. It's way off because the trees are short and small diameter. 22-28 cords/acre is alot closer range, just ask the guy cutting it. You can't make much of a log if the tree is only 5 inches at breast height. And they don't take softwood pulp here with a top under 3 inches. So how much further up the tree do ya have that 3 inches?? ;)

[Frickman]

Ron Scott's prices are about dead on for around this area, maybe just a hair low, especially for the skidding. It's nowhere near though $100.00/tree for trees in a forest setting. Most of the mills around here pay around $60.00 to $70.00/mbf for cut and skid, maybe a little more now with the price of fuel. They also haul your skidder from job to job and provide a dozer for putting in roads and landings. Some even provide a dozer operator when needed. I have, on rare occasions, contracted out myself as timber feller/bucker on someone else's job. I charge $60.00/hour for me and my saw in a forestland setting, no powerlines or other man made hazzards. If the timber is nice enough and the timber buyer has no other options, like using a feller-buncher, it can be worth it to them. I did cut and skid a small job for a friend once, but didn't do as well as with timber I buy.

DonE911 asked where do small timber harvesting jobs fit in the forest industry? One place they fit is for a small, owner/operator company with the right equipment can harvest these tracts and do quite well. I sold most of my large equipment and now use smaller equipment almost exclusively, like the size of a John Deere 440 I'm currently running. If the owner of the company is on the ground every day making harvest, bucking, and marketing decisions, he can maximize the value of the timber he is cutting. The smaller equipment allows him to maneuver in tight areas, and has a less imposing presence to the landowner and general public. If the timber buyer owns a mill as well the marketing opportunities are almost endless. With the current fragmentation of the forest resource there should be more and more of these jobs in the future.

[spencerhenry]

i did a small job like that last winter. was only 15 acres, had a barn and 2 houses. none of the trees were saw timber. couldnt even begin to estimate number of trees, and sizes varied from 2" to 20". i just charged an hourly rate for me and a laborer. charged him haul in time on the skidder, and fuel. i kept all the wood. i was cutting pinon and juniper which is only firewood. logging no, yard tree removal no. i bet the average cost to him was probably about $20/ tree to cut, remove, and burn slash. now i have about 35 cords of firewood too.